The Ingredients of Happiness
Pt 2: Matt 5:3-5 Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
Pastor Charles Price
Let me read Matthew 5, Verses 3 to 5. This marks the beginning of the statements that we generally call the Beatitudes, which mark the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, that occupy three chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. In Verse 3 Jesus said,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
We began looking at this section of Scripture a while ago. We call it the Beatitudes and it is introduced by eight statements that begin with the word “blessed”. I pointed out last time that the word “blessed” – the Greek work is “markariŏs” - literally means to be happy – not in the superficial sense of all our circumstances being nice and comfortable and therefore we are happy, but as a deep inner sense of well-being that is there irrespective of the circumstances that we find ourselves in. And these eight beatitudes – we’re - not talking about eight different kinds of people – one over here who is poor in spirit and they’re happy, one back here mourning, they’re happy; one over here hungering after righteousness and they’re happy, and so on. But rather, it’s speaking of eight qualities that need to be true in each one person who is going to know this kind of happiness, contentedness, satisfaction. And there’s a progression beginning with the first, building on the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, right through to the eighth. And we’re taking eight Sundays to look at these eight ingredients of real happiness. And we looked at the first one, which begins,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
That when it comes to being the person we were created to be, we need to recognize we do not have what it takes in ourselves. Paul wrote in Romans 7:
“I know that nothing good lives in me.”
That doesn’t mean everything about us is bad; there are lots of good things about us. But I likened it last time to being like a car that might have everything good about it – leather upholstery, a good surround sound system, television in the back seat, and all the rest of it – but if it hasn’t got an engine under the hood. Everything else about it might be good but it’s ultimately good for nothing. You could keep chickens in it but that’s about all.
And when Paul says, “In me there dwells no good thing”, he’s not saying there are not things about us that are good in themselves because of course there are. But they’re apart from the indwelling presence of God in my life. I am like a car without an engine under the hood. I’m ill equipped, unable to be the person that I am supposed to be. And the person who faces that about themselves will discover all the riches of the kingdom of heaven become theirs. That was the first ingredient, the first step. I want to build on that this morning, because when you face your poverty of spirit and you become aware of it. And often it’s through circumstances in life when you just realize you just haven’t got what it takes. You can do one of two things when you face your poverty of spirit. You can hide it; you can pretend it’s not like that. You can put on some outward façade. Or you can face I honestly and mourn it, which is the second ingredient:
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Now when Jesus talks about mourning here, he’s not talking about death and funerals but rather linking it with what’s gone before, that the consequence of facing our poverty of spirit is that we recognize it and we mourn that poverty, which is what we call repentance.
Now I want to talk about this, this morning. I want to talk about repentance from a dimension that we often don’t talk about repentance. You see, usually we think of repentance in terms of being sorry for what we do. Now of course that is important; there’s a necessary place for that. But true repentance is deeper than being sorry for what we do; it is recognizing that the cause of what I do is what I am. And it’s mourning what I am. You see, your problem, my problem in life is not what we do what we think it is but it’s what we are – what we do is simply the fruit, the symptom of what we are.
You may have heard this said before: you are not a sinner because you commit sins; you commit sins because you are a sinner. Does that make sense? You are not a sinner because you commit sins; you commit sins because you are a sinner. When you were born, God didn’t look out of heaven and say, “That’s a cute little baby down there; I think I can probably keep that one – I hope I can.” And then one day you go and sin. “Oh, no, not another one that’s gone.” No, you are not a sinner because you commit sins; you commit sins because you are a sinner, by nature.
Let me illustrate it. If you have a plum tree in your garden – if you have a garden – the plum tree is not a plum tree because plums grow on; plums grow on it because it’s a plum tree. Does that make sense? If you have a plum tree you don’t come outside in the spring and say, “I wonder if we’re going to have bananas this year, or tomatoes.” You come expecting plums for the simple reason you planted a plum stone, the plum stone has grown into a plum tree, the plum tree has a plum nature – all it can do is plum.
And when it’s a new plant – maybe just half a meter out of the ground – and your neighbor says to you, “What’s that in your garden?” You say it’s a plum tree – not because you are a prophet but because you know fine well that, having planted a plum stone that’s growing into a plum tree, all it’s capable of doing is producing plums.
Now in the same way, you and I were born in a state of separation from God that by nature we are sinners and therefore inevitably we sin. So it’s not that we commit sins that makes us a sinner; it’s that we are a sinner by nature that causes us to commit sins. Therefore what we do is not our real problem; it’s what we are.
When I was a kid my parents had hopes for me and they taught me that there are things that are good and things that are bad and you must do what is good. When I went to school my teachers took up the same process. There are certain things that are right and certain things that are wrong. You must not do what is wrong; you must do what is right. Don’t tie the girl’s hair in front of you to her chair – that’s not right.
But the interesting thing is: although all the teaching I ever had was how to be good and how to do what was right, it’s always been easier and usually more fun to do what’s wrong. Why? Because I have a corrupt nature and my children are just the same; it’s because of their mother cause you know…I know her better than you do.
It’s the heart that is the problem you see and we must understand this Biblical diagnosis. Otherwise we’ll never understand ourselves, we won’t understand our behaviour, neither will we understand how the Christian life is designed to operate and to accept this verdict about ourselves. You see in Genesis 8:21, after the flood the Lord said,
“Never again will I curse the ground because of man even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.”
Actually there was just Noah and his descendants at that point. And God says – this is not somebody else’s opinion – this is God’s verdict: “every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood”.
Jeremiah 17:7 says,
“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can understand it?”
Now of course we learn to become respectable, we learn to conform to social niceties. But when the opportunity presents itself, when we’re unaccountable, the heart reveals itself. I remember reading in the paper several years ago now about a blackout in New York City one evening, late afternoon – 4:30 or so – there was a power cut in lower Manhattan. The power was off for about 2 hours and when the power came back on - of course all the lighting had gone, all the burglar alarms had been disengaged - they found people running down the road carrying stolen goods. People had gone into places like Tiffany’s and just picked whatever they wanted. Now prior to the lights going off people were walking down the street looking very respectable as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. We have learned to behave in company around us but the moment the lights were off, the real heart came out.
Look what happened in New Orleans when Katrina hit that city. And at one point there were as many soldiers guarding the property against looting as there were soldiers rescuing people who were still stranded. Because the moment the normal niceties have broken down, what came out of people’s hearts was evil and destructive.
And that is true of you and me as well. We have learned to behave of course, but we have hearts that are corrupt and in the right environment, when the normal restraints give way, such as in Nazi Germany and the appalling atrocities that people involved themselves in even though it wasn’t their idea – they were simply taking orders but they were involved in the appalling massacre of eight million Jews for instance and Gypsies and many others. Because the heart is corrupt. If we don’t know this, if we don’t believe this, we will continue to be shocked by the secrets and sometimes the open appetites of our own hearts.
You know Paul wrote about himself in Romans 7:14 and I quote from the Amplified Bible. He says,
“I am a creature of the flesh – carnal, unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.”
In that passage he is describing himself apart from God – what I am like in my natural self. And we don’t grow out of this. Our natural self remains corrupted throughout our life. And that’s why we are to face our poverty of spirit and all the implications of it and then we are to mourn that poverty. And mourning is repentance. It is not just an act; it is an attitude of turning from myself and turning from my own resources. The word “repent” literally means to change the mind. Now the word “repent” doesn’t occur here in Matthew 5 but it’s a common word of course. And the word translated in English “repent” is the Greek word “mĕtanŏia” – two words – mĕta (to change), nŏia (the mind is changing - the mind); it’s a change of thinking. Repentance is not just changing the thinking about what I do but about who I am – an understanding of who I am. You see, when repentance is just an act, when we confess and are sorry for what we have done, when that is all we are, our repentance is only retrospective – that is it looks back on things I’ve done – I’m sorry I’ve done them. But when it becomes an attitude of heart it’s in advance, changing our mind, turning away from those things, which are not of God, those things which are of the natural flesh to the things which are of God, which we are going to see in just a moment.
You know I think the major theme of the Sermon on the Mount is this recognition that what we are is more important than what we do. And what we do are only symptoms and sometimes we look at symptoms – bad or good symptoms – but we don’t understand the cause, which is the heart. For instance, Jesus said later in Matthew 5, He said to the crowd of folks who were listening, “Have you heard it said, ‘You must not murder?’”
And I imagine most of them sat up straight, buttoned up their jackets and put their shoulders back and said, “We never murder – we know about that law; it’s a good law.
“But I say to you,” said Jesus, “if you are angry with your brother even though you’d never dare put a knife into his back, you’re already guilty of murder.
And they probably said to themselves, “What in the world is He talking about?”
“Have you heard it said, ‘You must not commit adultery’? Said Jesus.
And probably most sat up straight again and said, “Yeah, we’ve heard that one. We agree with that one. We don’t do that.”
“I say unto”, said Jesus, “if you look at a woman and you lust after her even though you may not even know her name, let alone where she lives, let alone get the courage to go and knock on her door one day, you’re already guilty of adultery.”
They probably thought, “What in the world are You talking about?”
You see murder and adultery are an act. Anger and lust is an attitude. And He is saying it’s not what you do that is in itself the essential issue; it’s what you are, what underlies what you do.
And then in Matthew 6 He talked similarly. This time He talked about people who give. He said, “There are people who come to the temple to give but they give”, He said, “to be seen by men.” They wait until there is a crowd around and then they bring out their offering and they wave it around and make sure people notice it and drop it in. And they go home with their reward. What’s their reward? Everybody else thinks they’re generous; that’s their reward. He says, “They have no reward from My Father in heaven”. Because although they are doing something that in itself is right – it’s not wrong to give – it’s right to give. What they do is not the issue; what they do is okay, it’s what they are that is the issue. They are egotistical, want to be seen by men. He talks about those who pray and they stand on the street corners and they pray with a great loud voice to be heard by men. Is there anything wrong with praying? Of course there’s not. It’s not what they did that was the issue; it’s what they were, their attitude.
He talked about those who fasted and He said they disfigured their faces to show men they were fasting – probably learned to mimic some stomach rumbles and people come by, “You’re looking a bit faint today; are you alright?”
“Oh yes, I’m alright, I’m fasting for the Lord.”
It’s not for the Lord at all; it’s for their own ego. And negatively, in Matthew 5, what you do that is wrong is not the issue; it’s what you are. Positively, in Chapter 6, what you do is not the issue – those things may be fine; it’s what you are that is the issue.
This is the message of the Sermon on the Mount. And that’s why in these opening verses He exposes here that when you face your poverty of spirit with honesty you are to mourn. That is: to adopt this attitude of repentance and repentance, as I say, is an attitude, a disposition; it’s turning from living in independence of God to living in dependence on God. It’s turning from operating in my strength to operating in His strength. It’s turning from living my life, my way to live my life God’s way. It’s turning from calling sin by nice names to justify it and calling it what God calls it and rejecting it. That is what repentance is. It’s a disposition; it’s an attitude.
And if you don’t know that, I’ll tell you what you’ll do: you will come and confess your sins again and again and again and you’ll go and do them all over again the next day. And you’ll wonder why, because you’ve only dealt with the symptoms.
You pick plums off a tree – what happens to the plum tree? It will produce some more plums. Just confessing your sin retrospectively is important and necessary but if that’s all you do – that’s your only understanding – you’ll commit the same sins again and again and again and again.
We need to recognize it’s the heart that is the issue. And repentance is not a quick fix in this sense that I’m speaking of now – a sort of prayer you might just pray at the end of a meeting and that’s it, done. It becomes an attitude, an on-going disposition of heart. There’s a beginning of repentance, an initial point at which we come in repentance to God and confess to Him our sin and our need, but then we live in that spirit of repentance where we’re turning from our old natural self to the Spirit of God.
And as Paul said in Philippians 3, setting these two in contrast,
“We glory in Christ Jesus and we put no confidence in the flesh.”
That is, we expect no more of ourselves than God expects of us and all God expects of us is failure, because He knows the state of our hearts. And so we recognize that poverty and we are to mourn that poverty of spirit. And what happens when we do mourn that poverty? Well let me read the rest of the verse,
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
That’s interesting, isn’t it? Having described why we mourn because of the state of our hearts, we might have expected perhaps a different word – blessed are those who mourn, they will be criticized – we might have expected that. They will be condemned – we might have expected that perhaps. He says, “They will be comforted”. Comforted by who? By the Comforter. Who is the Comforter? That is a title that Jesus gave to the Holy Spirit in John Chapter 14 and John Chapter 15 and John Chapter 16. Several times He called the Holy Spirit what some translations translate as Comforter – the Greek word is “paraklētŏs”. It’s not an easy word to translate. Others translate: “counsellor”, others translate: “consoler”. That word is also translated advocate- the meaning is somebody who comes alongside in your need and meets that need. That’s the meaning of that. But the point is it’s the same word here. Blessed are those who mourn, they will be “paraklētŏs” – it’s the same word – comforted by the Comforter.
You see the antidote to our poverty of spirit and the corruptness of our own hearts is the Holy Spirit who comes to indwell and live within us. And at the point of our mourning, at that point, the Holy Spirit gets into action in our lives. In fact, I would suggest this: it is the measure of our repentance that will mark the measure of the Holy Spirit’s working in our lives. The measure to which I have given up on my old natural self and abandoned myself to God completely is the measure to which the Holy Spirit is free to work. And the Holy Spirit’s task is to replace my poverty with the riches of Jesus Christ, to replace my weakness with the strength of Jesus Christ, replace my defeat with the victory of Jesus Christ, to replace my sin with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And I’ll tell you something: that is very comforting, don’t you think? Because it’s not about what I do for Him; it’s about what I let Him do for me, and in me and through me. You see whenever God exposes our failure and our sin, it is never to humiliate us, it is never to embarrass us, it is never to condemn us, it is never to rub our nose in our own dirt. It is always that having recognized it, He might replace us with His own presence in our lives.
So in the words of Paul in Galatians 2,
“It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”
The Christian life is not so much about God changing me as replacing me. It’s what Hudson Taylor who was a great missionary pioneer of the 19th Century – I think he coined this phrase – that “the secret of a changed life is in discovering it’s an exchanged life”. I give my life away to Him in all its weakness and poverty and He gives His life away to me in all its richness and power. And we live in the power of His indwelling Holy Spirit.
Paul talked about this in Romans Chapter 7. Let me just read you a couple of verses from Romans 7 – and many of you will know that this is a chapter when Paul, if you like, takes the lid off his own life and says, “Look inside and let me tell you what kind of battles I am living with”. And this is what he says. I’ll read just from Verse 18.
“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
“So I find this law at work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
Now Paul says there, “There’s this battle going on in my own heart. I know what is right, I know what is good, I want to do what is right, I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I know what is wrong, I know what is bad and I say to myself, ‘I’ll never do it again’, but I do. Why?
“Because”, he says, “ there is in me, what he calls a law of sin.” I best illustrate this as being like the law of gravity. If I hold this pen up in the air and then let go, it’s going to fall – not because I give it a push but because there is a law in the heart of the earth called gravity that says, if it goes up it’ll come down.
Now there is a law in your heart and my heart called the law of sin. Left to our natural devices we would simply live totally selfishly and hardly care who gets hurt in the process. There’s that natural law at work within me, pulling me down. But he says, “There’s another law” because he asks the question, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” He asks that question in Verse 24.
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
Notice, by the way, his question is not, “what will rescue me – is there a technique that I can follow?” No, it’s who. Is there someone bigger than I am? And he answers his own question.
“Thanks be to God – it’s through Jesus Christ.”
And two verses later he says,
“Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”
He says, “There is this law of sin at work within me but there is another law – the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”, he says, “which sets me free from the law of sin.”
Let me illustrate this to you. Several years ago I was in Cape Town in South Africa and I was speaking for a week at a church Bible conference there. And I was speaking from John 14, 15, 16 when Jesus in the upper room with His disciples, talked very intimately about His own relationship with the Father and their relationship with Him. “I am the Vine, you are the branches. If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit – you will. But without Me, you can detach yourself from me – you will do nothing. You can do nothing.”
And I was talking about this through that week. And on about the Tuesday night, I think it was, a young man in his early thirty’s came to talk to me at the end of the service and he said, “You know, I’ve been a Christian for some years now but I’ve never heard this before. But it rings true. I have been trying to live the Christian life and I know it’s not working and I know that it’s extremely difficult, but you’re telling me that it’s Christ, by the Holy Spirit, who lives that life in me.”
I said, “That’s right.”
He said, “But what I don’t understand is what do I have to do to make it work?”
I said, “Well, I understand your question but it may be the wrong question. The question maybe should be: who has to do it?”
“No, no,” he said, “I understand that. You have been saying that all week. It is Christ who does it. I am not a zombie; I don’t just sit down with my arms folded and say, well go on, it’s not I; it’s Christ…’bltth’ …..and hope something’s going to happen.”
I said, “Your question is a very important one. It’s a very good one. Can you come back tomorrow night?”
He said, “I’ll be here tomorrow night.”
I said, “Well come back tomorrow night and I’ll be talking a bit about that.”
The next night at the end of the service he came to the front again. He said, “I’m even more convinced that what you’re saying is true but I still don’t know what I have to do to make it work.”
I said, “Come back tomorrow night.”
On Thursday night (and we went to Friday night), but on Thursday night he came again and he said, “Look I need to meet you and talk to you because I’m not going to be here tomorrow night. I am working tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow evening, so I can’t be here tomorrow night. But I still haven’t grasped what I have to do to make it work.” He said, “Can I meet you for breakfast tomorrow?”
I said, “I’m sorry I’m meeting a group of businessmen for breakfast tomorrow and I’m speaking to them and then from there I am going to the YWAM training school – discipleship training school – and I am going to be speaking to them. And then I am going to the Bible Institute of South Africa, which I am there for lunch and speaking to the students. I am going to be free at 2 o’clock; I can meet you at 2 o’clock.
He said, “I start work at 2 o’clock.”
I said, “Then it looks as though we’re not able to meet.”
Then he said, “What are you doing at 4 o’clock?”
I said, “I’m free.”
He said, “Well, I’ll tell you what I do.” He said, “I’m a helicopter pilot. I work for a charter company and every Friday night I take a radio announcer and a police officer. We go about 4:30 - we fly around Cape Town. All the traffic leaves Cape Town on Friday night and from the air we can get a view of the flow of the traffic and where the hold-ups might be and the policeman sends messages back to his headquarters so they know what’s going on. And the radio announcer, every 15 minutes, gives a live traffic report from the air. We have the bird’s eye view of what’s going on.” He said, “For me, it’s very boring because I can fly around Capetown in two minutes and I’ve got to do this for two hours.” He said, “There’s a spare seat in the helicopter; would you be willing to come and then we can talk?”
I said, “I’d love to come, even if we don’t talk. I’d love to come and fly around Cape Town in a helicopter.”
He said, “Can you come to the helipad” –(I didn’t like the sound of that) – “helipad down by the Cape Town docks by 4 o’clock? We’ll have a cup of coffee, you have to sign a paper to say I’m not responsible for you and at 4:30 the other two guys will come.”
Well I went at 4 o’clock and when I got down to the helipad and got out of the car, there on the foreground on this pad was a big sturdy looking helicopter. It was on four wheels, big shaft coming out of the centre, bit rotary blades on top, a long thick tail with a propeller on the back and I thought that’s a very sturdy looking helicopter. I walked with him around the helicopter and there on the other side, (out of sight when I arrived) was what looked like a glass bubble on skis. It had a shaft not much thicker than this microphone stand with a propeller on top, a wire mesh tail with a propeller on the tail, it was on skis and it was chained to the ground. I said to my friend, “Wh – wh – wh - which is our helicopter?”
He said, “The little one.”
I said, “The little one? Why don’t we go in the big one?”
He said, “We don’t need to go in the big one; the little one is adequate.”
I said, “But it’s so small, it looks as though you don’t get in; it looks as though you put it on.”
He said, “No, it’s perfect. You see that glass dome? You can see through your feet what’s going on.”
I said, “I don’t want to see through me feet.”
He said, “Well that’s the whole point – we want to see what’s going on down there.”
I said, “Why is it chained to the ground?”
He said, “Well we get winds that come whistling through here that would pick this thing up and smash it again the wall.”
I said, “I am a bit nervous about this. I’ve got a wife and three children you know.”
He said, “Well I fly this most days; it’s perfectly safe.”
I said, “Why do you want me to sign this paper for?”
He said, “It’s just a formality.”
We went into the room there and he gave me a cup of coffee and I said, “Well tell me, how does this actually work? I mean I know what it’s like to be stuck on the ground; I’m comfortable with that – that’s normal. This thing doesn’t even have wings; how does it lift off the ground, break the law of gravity and fly?”
He said, “How much do you want to know?”
I said, “Well, keep it simple.”
So he said, “You see those blades on the top of the helicopter, you see how they are slightly angled?
I said, “Yes.”
“As they begin to rotate they create a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum so as they create the vacuum, the helicopter will lift to fill the vacuum. And depending on the strength of the vacuum will depend on how you climb or whether you reduce it to stay in a static position or you reduce it even more to begin to lower the helicopter.”
I said, “Really?”
He said, “Yes.”
“What’s that called?”
“Well that’s called the principle, the law of aerodynamics.”
“I see. So you’re telling me that when I get into this helicopter, the law of aerodynamics that is introduced by the rotation of the blade (and he told how you steer at the back and all kinds of stuff) will be powerful enough to overcome the pull of gravity which is what I’m scared of?”
He said, “Absolutely.”
I said, “So what do I have to do to make it work for me?”
He said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “Do I have to flap anything?”
He said, “Flap?”
I said, “Yes, you know, birds flap. Do I have to flap anything?”
He said, “Flap anything? Of course you don’t flap anything.”
I said, “Well what do I do?”
He said, “Just sit down.”
I said, “Listen, I’m no zombie you know. I don’t just sit back and say ‘blltth..’ and hope I’ll fly.”
He said, “Just get in the helicopter, put your seatbelt on and the helicopter will do the work.”
I said, “Do you know what you have just done? You have explained to me in a very simple way what I’ve been trying to preach all week.”
He said, “What do you mean?”
“I have been telling you this week that when you are in Christ and Christ is in you, He is the one who liberates you from all the pressures and powers and pulls that are still there, of which you yourself could never conquer them, and they set you free.” I said, “In fact there’s a verse in Romans 8:2 that says this exactly. ‘Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin.’
There is a law of sin, like the law of gravity pulling me down. That is something, which I will be subject to until the day I die. So will you – every one of us – no matter how long you’ve been a Christian, you would be capable of going out of this building and committing any sin that there is, because your heart is still – your natural self – is corrupt.
“But there is another law,” Paul says, “the law of the Spirit of life that sets me free from the law of sin. And the same way the law of gravity pulls me down; there is another law, the law of aerodynamics that you’ve explained to me which has set me free from the law of gravity. In fact”, I said to him, “I think Paul must have been sitting in a helicopter when he wrote that verse.
He said, “Oh, it’s not as simple as that.”
I said, “That’s exactly your problem. You want to do something; you want to be something. But that’s why Jesus said, ‘Unless you become as a little child, you’ll not be great in the kingdom.’ Because it’s your childlike dependence - and your problem is my problem - we actually want to be responsible for it. We want to pat ourselves on the back and say, ‘Wow, I’m really doing good. I’m more Christ-like than I used to be. I’m really copying Him well’. That isn’t what it’s about.”
Anyway, we took off. Actually we took off backwards and I thought we were blowing away but he said, “No, no we’re in control – getting away from the buildings.” We went up and we looked out and the traffic was fairly low so he said, “I’ll show you some of the sights”, which he did. And then he took me out to his mother’s home and he flew around in a tight circle where he was there and I was down here. And his mother came out because apparently he did this from time to time, and she waved to him so he waved the helicopter to her and then we went back and checked the traffic.
And after about two hours we landed. And I said, “You know for two hours you have been demonstrating the principle. Of course you do something; you’re the driver. You’ve got to engage the principle of aerodynamics, but you rest in a power that’s not your own. Of course you do something. The beatitudes, which we’ll look at, as they progress, we do things – of course we do, as we’ll see. But what we do is that which enables the Spirit of God in us to do His work. We don’t substitute for Him or do – we do a bit and He does a bit. You know, when we flew, we didn’t say, “Well, the helicopter will do a bit but I’ve got to do a bit as well (that’s the flapping bit). We don’t flap.
And you know the interesting thing is of course every moment that we were flying, the law of gravity hadn’t given up. We didn’t say, “Oh no, we’ve destroyed gravity now” – of course not.
If halfway around Cape Town I decided hey, I’m really feeling quite self-confident now. This is pretty good. I think I’ll get out and fly the rest of the way myself. The moment I step outside of the aircraft, the moment I try to act in independence of that helicopter I become subject to the law of gravity and I become a lump of jam in the middle of Cape Town.
And so it is with Christ. And I know that for many Christians who are spending their time, trying their best to live for Jesus, this is not only new but it’s confusing. But it’s the heart of the Christian message.
You see, the reason why we’ve borne our poverty is because we haven’t got what it takes in ourselves. So where do we turn? To the Comforter, and everyday we say, “Lord I live in that spirit of repentance and trust.” And those two things must go together – repentance and trust.
Repentance is recognizing I can’t – I’m turning from my own resources. Trust is saying: God can and I am trusting His resources as His Spirit lives in me for the purpose of living the life of Jesus in me, and expressing the character of Jesus through me.
But you don’t feel spiritual. You feel the old tugs every day. Like Paul says in Galatians, he talks about the fact the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other so you do not do what you want. And in that passage he says there’s this constant battle that takes place. You know we talk about spiritual warfare – it’s not out there; it’s in here in most instances. There is a battle out there but it’s primarily in here – that’s the big battle, because of the old nature that we have.
And God’s purpose is not that we reform the old nature, let alone evangelize or Christianize the old nature. It’s that we crucify it and recognize it to be crucified with Christ. “But I live, but not I, Christ lives in me”, to quote Paul.
And this is incredibly comforting because it means no matter who you are, no matter what your background, you can go out into this week with that disposition that says, “Lord I recognize my own frailty and my weakness but I recognize too Your sufficiency in me.” It doesn’t mean you’ll be sinless, because that is never promised in Scripture, in this life. You will feel the turbulence. You know, if you fly in a plane sometime – and I’ve been in planes where you’ve flown through air turbulence – and you know the plane is bouncing all over the place. I was on one when the flight attendants were serving a meal and they were – the captain announced that they should sit down, anchor the wheels and sit down in the aisle, on the ground, don’t even try to get back to a seat. We went through – it was like a roller coaster, it was great fun – except for those who had just been served a meal.
Sitting in that aircraft we were very aware of the air turbulence, but do you know what would have happened if you were on the ground looking at that plane fly over and you’d see the vapour trail across the sky? You’d say, “Look at that plane, look at the plane fly”. You would have no idea that we were bouncing around the way we were.
You know people will look at you and they will see Christ in you. You won’t see that yourself. You won’t look into a mirror – I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – you won’t look into a spiritual mirror any time in your life and say, “Wow, I’m so like Jesus today; look at that.” If you look into a mirror at all you will see an old nature alive and well hankering for an opportunity for a good sin. I’m sorry but that’s what my nature is like and so is yours. Let’s be honest.
You know the wonderful thing? Other people will look at you and they will see evidence of Christ. You will not be perfect. You will have lots to be, to apologize for in life. But there’s a growth from one degree of glory to another into His image. It’s not a growth that you produce because when Paul speaks of that, he says with unveiled faces we reflect the Lord’s glory and we are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is Spirit.
Somebody said to me this morning, “What about growing from one degree of glory into His likeness?”
Absolutely, but read the whole context; it’s from the Spirit at the beginning and it’s from the Spirit at the end of that statement. That’s the marvellous thing. And we’re going to see how that God indwelling us implants within us that hunger and that thirst for righteousness. He works in us to will and to do according to His good pleasure. We’re going to see that.
We’re going to see the characteristic of mercy as He begins to work in us for other peoples’ benefit. And as long as we see the Christian life primarily as for my benefit – “What are You going to do for me, God? Do more for me God, please help me God, please change me God, please do me, me, me, me God, Amen.” That’s not the Christian life; it won’t work that way. It’s those who are merciful. We’ll see that later. It’s as you say, “Lord live in me”, for what purpose? “That You might love people through me, that You might bless the world through me.” It’s always been God’s purpose for His chosen people – whether it’s Israel or the church – that He blesses others through us. We’ll see that. There is lots to do. My friend in Cape Town was absolutely right; it’s not a passivity where you sit back. But you know I don’t think anybody’s really understood the Christian life until they ask that question because when they ask that question you know they are getting it – it’s not I but Christ – but what they haven’t got yet is: well what do I do? Well that will come. But it’s facing that issue.
Then, just to finish, when you face your poverty of spirit and mourn that poverty, what happens next?
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
We’ll talk about that next time, but you see it’s the logical progression. To be meek is to be humble; it’s to be submissive. When we face our poverty of spirit, we mourn that poverty and the Comforter is at work in our hearts, we then become meek, we become humble, we become submissive.
Do you know humility is the most logical expression of the Christian life? It’s an oxymoron to be a proud Christian. The most natural expression of discovering Christ in His fullness is you have no other choice but to walk humbly. But of course if you think you are contributing significantly, you want people to know that and give yourself a pat on the back. And so we face our poverty, mourn the poverty, the Comforter comforts replacing what we are with what Christ is, and we then become meek. And here’s the marvellous thing we’ll see next week: you’ll inherit the earth – not heaven; you will inherit heaven - but that’s not the point. You’ll inherit the earth; you’ll discover life on earth becomes an adventure. Life on earth has purpose and significance. We’ll talk about that next time.
But the point this morning is this: that if you have been troubled by the fact that you do things that you need to confess to God and you do them again next week and you do them again, you do them again, you do them again, that’s totally what you would expect if all you do is confess what you do. That’s picking a plum. You come back next year, there’s another plum. “Oh, man, I pulled that plum last year. Why does it produce more plums?” Because it’s a plum tree. You’ve got to put an axe to the root.
To be crucified with Christ and understand what that means, which I haven’t time to explain this morning because I am finishing, recognize God has taken all that I am in my old self and He’s united it with Christ in His death, so as far as God is concerned it is actually dealt with; I am declared righteous. I still battle in this life with that old nature which I will do till the day I die, but instead Christ, risen again from the dead, now lives in me that victorious life. It is no longer I who live; it’s Christ who lives in me. And we live in that tension of mourning and the comfort of the Comforter. We mourn everyday and we enjoy the resources everyday, of the Comforter working in us and through us.
Does that make sense?
Let’s pray together. Father we thank You, thank You so much this morning that we are on level ground. We don’t come to You with some of us having a little bit more righteousness than somebody else, some with a better track record than somebody else, somebody who’s not got hooked into some bad things in the way somebody else has, and therefore they’re at an advantage. We come to You our Father, recognizing that all our righteousness is as filthy rags. But the marvellous thing is: and we’re so grateful for this our Father – that You sent Your Son, the Lord Jesus, that He might inhabit our bodies with His Spirit, that the life of Jesus might be lived in us as we live in that Spirit of repentance and trust. We turn from what we are, recognizing we can’t live this life ourselves and we turn to who You are, recognizing You can and You will, because that’s Your commitment to us, that we may be men and women who live everyday in union with Yourself and allow You to be our strength and our power. Make this real for us. For those of us who don’t know You at all, Lord, bring us to that starting gate of the Christian life when in repentance we confess our sin and our need and our separation from you and we thank You for dying as our substitute and being raised from the dead to indwell us, having cleansed us and forgiven us. Thank You so much for that. I pray many of us will enter that in a new way. We ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Pt 2: Matt 5:3-5 Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
Pastor Charles Price
Let me read Matthew 5, Verses 3 to 5. This marks the beginning of the statements that we generally call the Beatitudes, which mark the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, that occupy three chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. In Verse 3 Jesus said,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
We began looking at this section of Scripture a while ago. We call it the Beatitudes and it is introduced by eight statements that begin with the word “blessed”. I pointed out last time that the word “blessed” – the Greek work is “markariŏs” - literally means to be happy – not in the superficial sense of all our circumstances being nice and comfortable and therefore we are happy, but as a deep inner sense of well-being that is there irrespective of the circumstances that we find ourselves in. And these eight beatitudes – we’re - not talking about eight different kinds of people – one over here who is poor in spirit and they’re happy, one back here mourning, they’re happy; one over here hungering after righteousness and they’re happy, and so on. But rather, it’s speaking of eight qualities that need to be true in each one person who is going to know this kind of happiness, contentedness, satisfaction. And there’s a progression beginning with the first, building on the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, right through to the eighth. And we’re taking eight Sundays to look at these eight ingredients of real happiness. And we looked at the first one, which begins,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
That when it comes to being the person we were created to be, we need to recognize we do not have what it takes in ourselves. Paul wrote in Romans 7:
“I know that nothing good lives in me.”
That doesn’t mean everything about us is bad; there are lots of good things about us. But I likened it last time to being like a car that might have everything good about it – leather upholstery, a good surround sound system, television in the back seat, and all the rest of it – but if it hasn’t got an engine under the hood. Everything else about it might be good but it’s ultimately good for nothing. You could keep chickens in it but that’s about all.
And when Paul says, “In me there dwells no good thing”, he’s not saying there are not things about us that are good in themselves because of course there are. But they’re apart from the indwelling presence of God in my life. I am like a car without an engine under the hood. I’m ill equipped, unable to be the person that I am supposed to be. And the person who faces that about themselves will discover all the riches of the kingdom of heaven become theirs. That was the first ingredient, the first step. I want to build on that this morning, because when you face your poverty of spirit and you become aware of it. And often it’s through circumstances in life when you just realize you just haven’t got what it takes. You can do one of two things when you face your poverty of spirit. You can hide it; you can pretend it’s not like that. You can put on some outward façade. Or you can face I honestly and mourn it, which is the second ingredient:
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Now when Jesus talks about mourning here, he’s not talking about death and funerals but rather linking it with what’s gone before, that the consequence of facing our poverty of spirit is that we recognize it and we mourn that poverty, which is what we call repentance.
Now I want to talk about this, this morning. I want to talk about repentance from a dimension that we often don’t talk about repentance. You see, usually we think of repentance in terms of being sorry for what we do. Now of course that is important; there’s a necessary place for that. But true repentance is deeper than being sorry for what we do; it is recognizing that the cause of what I do is what I am. And it’s mourning what I am. You see, your problem, my problem in life is not what we do what we think it is but it’s what we are – what we do is simply the fruit, the symptom of what we are.
You may have heard this said before: you are not a sinner because you commit sins; you commit sins because you are a sinner. Does that make sense? You are not a sinner because you commit sins; you commit sins because you are a sinner. When you were born, God didn’t look out of heaven and say, “That’s a cute little baby down there; I think I can probably keep that one – I hope I can.” And then one day you go and sin. “Oh, no, not another one that’s gone.” No, you are not a sinner because you commit sins; you commit sins because you are a sinner, by nature.
Let me illustrate it. If you have a plum tree in your garden – if you have a garden – the plum tree is not a plum tree because plums grow on; plums grow on it because it’s a plum tree. Does that make sense? If you have a plum tree you don’t come outside in the spring and say, “I wonder if we’re going to have bananas this year, or tomatoes.” You come expecting plums for the simple reason you planted a plum stone, the plum stone has grown into a plum tree, the plum tree has a plum nature – all it can do is plum.
And when it’s a new plant – maybe just half a meter out of the ground – and your neighbor says to you, “What’s that in your garden?” You say it’s a plum tree – not because you are a prophet but because you know fine well that, having planted a plum stone that’s growing into a plum tree, all it’s capable of doing is producing plums.
Now in the same way, you and I were born in a state of separation from God that by nature we are sinners and therefore inevitably we sin. So it’s not that we commit sins that makes us a sinner; it’s that we are a sinner by nature that causes us to commit sins. Therefore what we do is not our real problem; it’s what we are.
When I was a kid my parents had hopes for me and they taught me that there are things that are good and things that are bad and you must do what is good. When I went to school my teachers took up the same process. There are certain things that are right and certain things that are wrong. You must not do what is wrong; you must do what is right. Don’t tie the girl’s hair in front of you to her chair – that’s not right.
But the interesting thing is: although all the teaching I ever had was how to be good and how to do what was right, it’s always been easier and usually more fun to do what’s wrong. Why? Because I have a corrupt nature and my children are just the same; it’s because of their mother cause you know…I know her better than you do.
It’s the heart that is the problem you see and we must understand this Biblical diagnosis. Otherwise we’ll never understand ourselves, we won’t understand our behaviour, neither will we understand how the Christian life is designed to operate and to accept this verdict about ourselves. You see in Genesis 8:21, after the flood the Lord said,
“Never again will I curse the ground because of man even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.”
Actually there was just Noah and his descendants at that point. And God says – this is not somebody else’s opinion – this is God’s verdict: “every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood”.
Jeremiah 17:7 says,
“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can understand it?”
Now of course we learn to become respectable, we learn to conform to social niceties. But when the opportunity presents itself, when we’re unaccountable, the heart reveals itself. I remember reading in the paper several years ago now about a blackout in New York City one evening, late afternoon – 4:30 or so – there was a power cut in lower Manhattan. The power was off for about 2 hours and when the power came back on - of course all the lighting had gone, all the burglar alarms had been disengaged - they found people running down the road carrying stolen goods. People had gone into places like Tiffany’s and just picked whatever they wanted. Now prior to the lights going off people were walking down the street looking very respectable as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. We have learned to behave in company around us but the moment the lights were off, the real heart came out.
Look what happened in New Orleans when Katrina hit that city. And at one point there were as many soldiers guarding the property against looting as there were soldiers rescuing people who were still stranded. Because the moment the normal niceties have broken down, what came out of people’s hearts was evil and destructive.
And that is true of you and me as well. We have learned to behave of course, but we have hearts that are corrupt and in the right environment, when the normal restraints give way, such as in Nazi Germany and the appalling atrocities that people involved themselves in even though it wasn’t their idea – they were simply taking orders but they were involved in the appalling massacre of eight million Jews for instance and Gypsies and many others. Because the heart is corrupt. If we don’t know this, if we don’t believe this, we will continue to be shocked by the secrets and sometimes the open appetites of our own hearts.
You know Paul wrote about himself in Romans 7:14 and I quote from the Amplified Bible. He says,
“I am a creature of the flesh – carnal, unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.”
In that passage he is describing himself apart from God – what I am like in my natural self. And we don’t grow out of this. Our natural self remains corrupted throughout our life. And that’s why we are to face our poverty of spirit and all the implications of it and then we are to mourn that poverty. And mourning is repentance. It is not just an act; it is an attitude of turning from myself and turning from my own resources. The word “repent” literally means to change the mind. Now the word “repent” doesn’t occur here in Matthew 5 but it’s a common word of course. And the word translated in English “repent” is the Greek word “mĕtanŏia” – two words – mĕta (to change), nŏia (the mind is changing - the mind); it’s a change of thinking. Repentance is not just changing the thinking about what I do but about who I am – an understanding of who I am. You see, when repentance is just an act, when we confess and are sorry for what we have done, when that is all we are, our repentance is only retrospective – that is it looks back on things I’ve done – I’m sorry I’ve done them. But when it becomes an attitude of heart it’s in advance, changing our mind, turning away from those things, which are not of God, those things which are of the natural flesh to the things which are of God, which we are going to see in just a moment.
You know I think the major theme of the Sermon on the Mount is this recognition that what we are is more important than what we do. And what we do are only symptoms and sometimes we look at symptoms – bad or good symptoms – but we don’t understand the cause, which is the heart. For instance, Jesus said later in Matthew 5, He said to the crowd of folks who were listening, “Have you heard it said, ‘You must not murder?’”
And I imagine most of them sat up straight, buttoned up their jackets and put their shoulders back and said, “We never murder – we know about that law; it’s a good law.
“But I say to you,” said Jesus, “if you are angry with your brother even though you’d never dare put a knife into his back, you’re already guilty of murder.
And they probably said to themselves, “What in the world is He talking about?”
“Have you heard it said, ‘You must not commit adultery’? Said Jesus.
And probably most sat up straight again and said, “Yeah, we’ve heard that one. We agree with that one. We don’t do that.”
“I say unto”, said Jesus, “if you look at a woman and you lust after her even though you may not even know her name, let alone where she lives, let alone get the courage to go and knock on her door one day, you’re already guilty of adultery.”
They probably thought, “What in the world are You talking about?”
You see murder and adultery are an act. Anger and lust is an attitude. And He is saying it’s not what you do that is in itself the essential issue; it’s what you are, what underlies what you do.
And then in Matthew 6 He talked similarly. This time He talked about people who give. He said, “There are people who come to the temple to give but they give”, He said, “to be seen by men.” They wait until there is a crowd around and then they bring out their offering and they wave it around and make sure people notice it and drop it in. And they go home with their reward. What’s their reward? Everybody else thinks they’re generous; that’s their reward. He says, “They have no reward from My Father in heaven”. Because although they are doing something that in itself is right – it’s not wrong to give – it’s right to give. What they do is not the issue; what they do is okay, it’s what they are that is the issue. They are egotistical, want to be seen by men. He talks about those who pray and they stand on the street corners and they pray with a great loud voice to be heard by men. Is there anything wrong with praying? Of course there’s not. It’s not what they did that was the issue; it’s what they were, their attitude.
He talked about those who fasted and He said they disfigured their faces to show men they were fasting – probably learned to mimic some stomach rumbles and people come by, “You’re looking a bit faint today; are you alright?”
“Oh yes, I’m alright, I’m fasting for the Lord.”
It’s not for the Lord at all; it’s for their own ego. And negatively, in Matthew 5, what you do that is wrong is not the issue; it’s what you are. Positively, in Chapter 6, what you do is not the issue – those things may be fine; it’s what you are that is the issue.
This is the message of the Sermon on the Mount. And that’s why in these opening verses He exposes here that when you face your poverty of spirit with honesty you are to mourn. That is: to adopt this attitude of repentance and repentance, as I say, is an attitude, a disposition; it’s turning from living in independence of God to living in dependence on God. It’s turning from operating in my strength to operating in His strength. It’s turning from living my life, my way to live my life God’s way. It’s turning from calling sin by nice names to justify it and calling it what God calls it and rejecting it. That is what repentance is. It’s a disposition; it’s an attitude.
And if you don’t know that, I’ll tell you what you’ll do: you will come and confess your sins again and again and again and you’ll go and do them all over again the next day. And you’ll wonder why, because you’ve only dealt with the symptoms.
You pick plums off a tree – what happens to the plum tree? It will produce some more plums. Just confessing your sin retrospectively is important and necessary but if that’s all you do – that’s your only understanding – you’ll commit the same sins again and again and again and again.
We need to recognize it’s the heart that is the issue. And repentance is not a quick fix in this sense that I’m speaking of now – a sort of prayer you might just pray at the end of a meeting and that’s it, done. It becomes an attitude, an on-going disposition of heart. There’s a beginning of repentance, an initial point at which we come in repentance to God and confess to Him our sin and our need, but then we live in that spirit of repentance where we’re turning from our old natural self to the Spirit of God.
And as Paul said in Philippians 3, setting these two in contrast,
“We glory in Christ Jesus and we put no confidence in the flesh.”
That is, we expect no more of ourselves than God expects of us and all God expects of us is failure, because He knows the state of our hearts. And so we recognize that poverty and we are to mourn that poverty of spirit. And what happens when we do mourn that poverty? Well let me read the rest of the verse,
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
That’s interesting, isn’t it? Having described why we mourn because of the state of our hearts, we might have expected perhaps a different word – blessed are those who mourn, they will be criticized – we might have expected that. They will be condemned – we might have expected that perhaps. He says, “They will be comforted”. Comforted by who? By the Comforter. Who is the Comforter? That is a title that Jesus gave to the Holy Spirit in John Chapter 14 and John Chapter 15 and John Chapter 16. Several times He called the Holy Spirit what some translations translate as Comforter – the Greek word is “paraklētŏs”. It’s not an easy word to translate. Others translate: “counsellor”, others translate: “consoler”. That word is also translated advocate- the meaning is somebody who comes alongside in your need and meets that need. That’s the meaning of that. But the point is it’s the same word here. Blessed are those who mourn, they will be “paraklētŏs” – it’s the same word – comforted by the Comforter.
You see the antidote to our poverty of spirit and the corruptness of our own hearts is the Holy Spirit who comes to indwell and live within us. And at the point of our mourning, at that point, the Holy Spirit gets into action in our lives. In fact, I would suggest this: it is the measure of our repentance that will mark the measure of the Holy Spirit’s working in our lives. The measure to which I have given up on my old natural self and abandoned myself to God completely is the measure to which the Holy Spirit is free to work. And the Holy Spirit’s task is to replace my poverty with the riches of Jesus Christ, to replace my weakness with the strength of Jesus Christ, replace my defeat with the victory of Jesus Christ, to replace my sin with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And I’ll tell you something: that is very comforting, don’t you think? Because it’s not about what I do for Him; it’s about what I let Him do for me, and in me and through me. You see whenever God exposes our failure and our sin, it is never to humiliate us, it is never to embarrass us, it is never to condemn us, it is never to rub our nose in our own dirt. It is always that having recognized it, He might replace us with His own presence in our lives.
So in the words of Paul in Galatians 2,
“It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”
The Christian life is not so much about God changing me as replacing me. It’s what Hudson Taylor who was a great missionary pioneer of the 19th Century – I think he coined this phrase – that “the secret of a changed life is in discovering it’s an exchanged life”. I give my life away to Him in all its weakness and poverty and He gives His life away to me in all its richness and power. And we live in the power of His indwelling Holy Spirit.
Paul talked about this in Romans Chapter 7. Let me just read you a couple of verses from Romans 7 – and many of you will know that this is a chapter when Paul, if you like, takes the lid off his own life and says, “Look inside and let me tell you what kind of battles I am living with”. And this is what he says. I’ll read just from Verse 18.
“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
“So I find this law at work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
Now Paul says there, “There’s this battle going on in my own heart. I know what is right, I know what is good, I want to do what is right, I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I know what is wrong, I know what is bad and I say to myself, ‘I’ll never do it again’, but I do. Why?
“Because”, he says, “ there is in me, what he calls a law of sin.” I best illustrate this as being like the law of gravity. If I hold this pen up in the air and then let go, it’s going to fall – not because I give it a push but because there is a law in the heart of the earth called gravity that says, if it goes up it’ll come down.
Now there is a law in your heart and my heart called the law of sin. Left to our natural devices we would simply live totally selfishly and hardly care who gets hurt in the process. There’s that natural law at work within me, pulling me down. But he says, “There’s another law” because he asks the question, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” He asks that question in Verse 24.
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
Notice, by the way, his question is not, “what will rescue me – is there a technique that I can follow?” No, it’s who. Is there someone bigger than I am? And he answers his own question.
“Thanks be to God – it’s through Jesus Christ.”
And two verses later he says,
“Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”
He says, “There is this law of sin at work within me but there is another law – the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”, he says, “which sets me free from the law of sin.”
Let me illustrate this to you. Several years ago I was in Cape Town in South Africa and I was speaking for a week at a church Bible conference there. And I was speaking from John 14, 15, 16 when Jesus in the upper room with His disciples, talked very intimately about His own relationship with the Father and their relationship with Him. “I am the Vine, you are the branches. If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit – you will. But without Me, you can detach yourself from me – you will do nothing. You can do nothing.”
And I was talking about this through that week. And on about the Tuesday night, I think it was, a young man in his early thirty’s came to talk to me at the end of the service and he said, “You know, I’ve been a Christian for some years now but I’ve never heard this before. But it rings true. I have been trying to live the Christian life and I know it’s not working and I know that it’s extremely difficult, but you’re telling me that it’s Christ, by the Holy Spirit, who lives that life in me.”
I said, “That’s right.”
He said, “But what I don’t understand is what do I have to do to make it work?”
I said, “Well, I understand your question but it may be the wrong question. The question maybe should be: who has to do it?”
“No, no,” he said, “I understand that. You have been saying that all week. It is Christ who does it. I am not a zombie; I don’t just sit down with my arms folded and say, well go on, it’s not I; it’s Christ…’bltth’ …..and hope something’s going to happen.”
I said, “Your question is a very important one. It’s a very good one. Can you come back tomorrow night?”
He said, “I’ll be here tomorrow night.”
I said, “Well come back tomorrow night and I’ll be talking a bit about that.”
The next night at the end of the service he came to the front again. He said, “I’m even more convinced that what you’re saying is true but I still don’t know what I have to do to make it work.”
I said, “Come back tomorrow night.”
On Thursday night (and we went to Friday night), but on Thursday night he came again and he said, “Look I need to meet you and talk to you because I’m not going to be here tomorrow night. I am working tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow evening, so I can’t be here tomorrow night. But I still haven’t grasped what I have to do to make it work.” He said, “Can I meet you for breakfast tomorrow?”
I said, “I’m sorry I’m meeting a group of businessmen for breakfast tomorrow and I’m speaking to them and then from there I am going to the YWAM training school – discipleship training school – and I am going to be speaking to them. And then I am going to the Bible Institute of South Africa, which I am there for lunch and speaking to the students. I am going to be free at 2 o’clock; I can meet you at 2 o’clock.
He said, “I start work at 2 o’clock.”
I said, “Then it looks as though we’re not able to meet.”
Then he said, “What are you doing at 4 o’clock?”
I said, “I’m free.”
He said, “Well, I’ll tell you what I do.” He said, “I’m a helicopter pilot. I work for a charter company and every Friday night I take a radio announcer and a police officer. We go about 4:30 - we fly around Cape Town. All the traffic leaves Cape Town on Friday night and from the air we can get a view of the flow of the traffic and where the hold-ups might be and the policeman sends messages back to his headquarters so they know what’s going on. And the radio announcer, every 15 minutes, gives a live traffic report from the air. We have the bird’s eye view of what’s going on.” He said, “For me, it’s very boring because I can fly around Capetown in two minutes and I’ve got to do this for two hours.” He said, “There’s a spare seat in the helicopter; would you be willing to come and then we can talk?”
I said, “I’d love to come, even if we don’t talk. I’d love to come and fly around Cape Town in a helicopter.”
He said, “Can you come to the helipad” –(I didn’t like the sound of that) – “helipad down by the Cape Town docks by 4 o’clock? We’ll have a cup of coffee, you have to sign a paper to say I’m not responsible for you and at 4:30 the other two guys will come.”
Well I went at 4 o’clock and when I got down to the helipad and got out of the car, there on the foreground on this pad was a big sturdy looking helicopter. It was on four wheels, big shaft coming out of the centre, bit rotary blades on top, a long thick tail with a propeller on the back and I thought that’s a very sturdy looking helicopter. I walked with him around the helicopter and there on the other side, (out of sight when I arrived) was what looked like a glass bubble on skis. It had a shaft not much thicker than this microphone stand with a propeller on top, a wire mesh tail with a propeller on the tail, it was on skis and it was chained to the ground. I said to my friend, “Wh – wh – wh - which is our helicopter?”
He said, “The little one.”
I said, “The little one? Why don’t we go in the big one?”
He said, “We don’t need to go in the big one; the little one is adequate.”
I said, “But it’s so small, it looks as though you don’t get in; it looks as though you put it on.”
He said, “No, it’s perfect. You see that glass dome? You can see through your feet what’s going on.”
I said, “I don’t want to see through me feet.”
He said, “Well that’s the whole point – we want to see what’s going on down there.”
I said, “Why is it chained to the ground?”
He said, “Well we get winds that come whistling through here that would pick this thing up and smash it again the wall.”
I said, “I am a bit nervous about this. I’ve got a wife and three children you know.”
He said, “Well I fly this most days; it’s perfectly safe.”
I said, “Why do you want me to sign this paper for?”
He said, “It’s just a formality.”
We went into the room there and he gave me a cup of coffee and I said, “Well tell me, how does this actually work? I mean I know what it’s like to be stuck on the ground; I’m comfortable with that – that’s normal. This thing doesn’t even have wings; how does it lift off the ground, break the law of gravity and fly?”
He said, “How much do you want to know?”
I said, “Well, keep it simple.”
So he said, “You see those blades on the top of the helicopter, you see how they are slightly angled?
I said, “Yes.”
“As they begin to rotate they create a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum so as they create the vacuum, the helicopter will lift to fill the vacuum. And depending on the strength of the vacuum will depend on how you climb or whether you reduce it to stay in a static position or you reduce it even more to begin to lower the helicopter.”
I said, “Really?”
He said, “Yes.”
“What’s that called?”
“Well that’s called the principle, the law of aerodynamics.”
“I see. So you’re telling me that when I get into this helicopter, the law of aerodynamics that is introduced by the rotation of the blade (and he told how you steer at the back and all kinds of stuff) will be powerful enough to overcome the pull of gravity which is what I’m scared of?”
He said, “Absolutely.”
I said, “So what do I have to do to make it work for me?”
He said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “Do I have to flap anything?”
He said, “Flap?”
I said, “Yes, you know, birds flap. Do I have to flap anything?”
He said, “Flap anything? Of course you don’t flap anything.”
I said, “Well what do I do?”
He said, “Just sit down.”
I said, “Listen, I’m no zombie you know. I don’t just sit back and say ‘blltth..’ and hope I’ll fly.”
He said, “Just get in the helicopter, put your seatbelt on and the helicopter will do the work.”
I said, “Do you know what you have just done? You have explained to me in a very simple way what I’ve been trying to preach all week.”
He said, “What do you mean?”
“I have been telling you this week that when you are in Christ and Christ is in you, He is the one who liberates you from all the pressures and powers and pulls that are still there, of which you yourself could never conquer them, and they set you free.” I said, “In fact there’s a verse in Romans 8:2 that says this exactly. ‘Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin.’
There is a law of sin, like the law of gravity pulling me down. That is something, which I will be subject to until the day I die. So will you – every one of us – no matter how long you’ve been a Christian, you would be capable of going out of this building and committing any sin that there is, because your heart is still – your natural self – is corrupt.
“But there is another law,” Paul says, “the law of the Spirit of life that sets me free from the law of sin. And the same way the law of gravity pulls me down; there is another law, the law of aerodynamics that you’ve explained to me which has set me free from the law of gravity. In fact”, I said to him, “I think Paul must have been sitting in a helicopter when he wrote that verse.
He said, “Oh, it’s not as simple as that.”
I said, “That’s exactly your problem. You want to do something; you want to be something. But that’s why Jesus said, ‘Unless you become as a little child, you’ll not be great in the kingdom.’ Because it’s your childlike dependence - and your problem is my problem - we actually want to be responsible for it. We want to pat ourselves on the back and say, ‘Wow, I’m really doing good. I’m more Christ-like than I used to be. I’m really copying Him well’. That isn’t what it’s about.”
Anyway, we took off. Actually we took off backwards and I thought we were blowing away but he said, “No, no we’re in control – getting away from the buildings.” We went up and we looked out and the traffic was fairly low so he said, “I’ll show you some of the sights”, which he did. And then he took me out to his mother’s home and he flew around in a tight circle where he was there and I was down here. And his mother came out because apparently he did this from time to time, and she waved to him so he waved the helicopter to her and then we went back and checked the traffic.
And after about two hours we landed. And I said, “You know for two hours you have been demonstrating the principle. Of course you do something; you’re the driver. You’ve got to engage the principle of aerodynamics, but you rest in a power that’s not your own. Of course you do something. The beatitudes, which we’ll look at, as they progress, we do things – of course we do, as we’ll see. But what we do is that which enables the Spirit of God in us to do His work. We don’t substitute for Him or do – we do a bit and He does a bit. You know, when we flew, we didn’t say, “Well, the helicopter will do a bit but I’ve got to do a bit as well (that’s the flapping bit). We don’t flap.
And you know the interesting thing is of course every moment that we were flying, the law of gravity hadn’t given up. We didn’t say, “Oh no, we’ve destroyed gravity now” – of course not.
If halfway around Cape Town I decided hey, I’m really feeling quite self-confident now. This is pretty good. I think I’ll get out and fly the rest of the way myself. The moment I step outside of the aircraft, the moment I try to act in independence of that helicopter I become subject to the law of gravity and I become a lump of jam in the middle of Cape Town.
And so it is with Christ. And I know that for many Christians who are spending their time, trying their best to live for Jesus, this is not only new but it’s confusing. But it’s the heart of the Christian message.
You see, the reason why we’ve borne our poverty is because we haven’t got what it takes in ourselves. So where do we turn? To the Comforter, and everyday we say, “Lord I live in that spirit of repentance and trust.” And those two things must go together – repentance and trust.
Repentance is recognizing I can’t – I’m turning from my own resources. Trust is saying: God can and I am trusting His resources as His Spirit lives in me for the purpose of living the life of Jesus in me, and expressing the character of Jesus through me.
But you don’t feel spiritual. You feel the old tugs every day. Like Paul says in Galatians, he talks about the fact the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other so you do not do what you want. And in that passage he says there’s this constant battle that takes place. You know we talk about spiritual warfare – it’s not out there; it’s in here in most instances. There is a battle out there but it’s primarily in here – that’s the big battle, because of the old nature that we have.
And God’s purpose is not that we reform the old nature, let alone evangelize or Christianize the old nature. It’s that we crucify it and recognize it to be crucified with Christ. “But I live, but not I, Christ lives in me”, to quote Paul.
And this is incredibly comforting because it means no matter who you are, no matter what your background, you can go out into this week with that disposition that says, “Lord I recognize my own frailty and my weakness but I recognize too Your sufficiency in me.” It doesn’t mean you’ll be sinless, because that is never promised in Scripture, in this life. You will feel the turbulence. You know, if you fly in a plane sometime – and I’ve been in planes where you’ve flown through air turbulence – and you know the plane is bouncing all over the place. I was on one when the flight attendants were serving a meal and they were – the captain announced that they should sit down, anchor the wheels and sit down in the aisle, on the ground, don’t even try to get back to a seat. We went through – it was like a roller coaster, it was great fun – except for those who had just been served a meal.
Sitting in that aircraft we were very aware of the air turbulence, but do you know what would have happened if you were on the ground looking at that plane fly over and you’d see the vapour trail across the sky? You’d say, “Look at that plane, look at the plane fly”. You would have no idea that we were bouncing around the way we were.
You know people will look at you and they will see Christ in you. You won’t see that yourself. You won’t look into a mirror – I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – you won’t look into a spiritual mirror any time in your life and say, “Wow, I’m so like Jesus today; look at that.” If you look into a mirror at all you will see an old nature alive and well hankering for an opportunity for a good sin. I’m sorry but that’s what my nature is like and so is yours. Let’s be honest.
You know the wonderful thing? Other people will look at you and they will see evidence of Christ. You will not be perfect. You will have lots to be, to apologize for in life. But there’s a growth from one degree of glory to another into His image. It’s not a growth that you produce because when Paul speaks of that, he says with unveiled faces we reflect the Lord’s glory and we are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is Spirit.
Somebody said to me this morning, “What about growing from one degree of glory into His likeness?”
Absolutely, but read the whole context; it’s from the Spirit at the beginning and it’s from the Spirit at the end of that statement. That’s the marvellous thing. And we’re going to see how that God indwelling us implants within us that hunger and that thirst for righteousness. He works in us to will and to do according to His good pleasure. We’re going to see that.
We’re going to see the characteristic of mercy as He begins to work in us for other peoples’ benefit. And as long as we see the Christian life primarily as for my benefit – “What are You going to do for me, God? Do more for me God, please help me God, please change me God, please do me, me, me, me God, Amen.” That’s not the Christian life; it won’t work that way. It’s those who are merciful. We’ll see that later. It’s as you say, “Lord live in me”, for what purpose? “That You might love people through me, that You might bless the world through me.” It’s always been God’s purpose for His chosen people – whether it’s Israel or the church – that He blesses others through us. We’ll see that. There is lots to do. My friend in Cape Town was absolutely right; it’s not a passivity where you sit back. But you know I don’t think anybody’s really understood the Christian life until they ask that question because when they ask that question you know they are getting it – it’s not I but Christ – but what they haven’t got yet is: well what do I do? Well that will come. But it’s facing that issue.
Then, just to finish, when you face your poverty of spirit and mourn that poverty, what happens next?
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
We’ll talk about that next time, but you see it’s the logical progression. To be meek is to be humble; it’s to be submissive. When we face our poverty of spirit, we mourn that poverty and the Comforter is at work in our hearts, we then become meek, we become humble, we become submissive.
Do you know humility is the most logical expression of the Christian life? It’s an oxymoron to be a proud Christian. The most natural expression of discovering Christ in His fullness is you have no other choice but to walk humbly. But of course if you think you are contributing significantly, you want people to know that and give yourself a pat on the back. And so we face our poverty, mourn the poverty, the Comforter comforts replacing what we are with what Christ is, and we then become meek. And here’s the marvellous thing we’ll see next week: you’ll inherit the earth – not heaven; you will inherit heaven - but that’s not the point. You’ll inherit the earth; you’ll discover life on earth becomes an adventure. Life on earth has purpose and significance. We’ll talk about that next time.
But the point this morning is this: that if you have been troubled by the fact that you do things that you need to confess to God and you do them again next week and you do them again, you do them again, you do them again, that’s totally what you would expect if all you do is confess what you do. That’s picking a plum. You come back next year, there’s another plum. “Oh, man, I pulled that plum last year. Why does it produce more plums?” Because it’s a plum tree. You’ve got to put an axe to the root.
To be crucified with Christ and understand what that means, which I haven’t time to explain this morning because I am finishing, recognize God has taken all that I am in my old self and He’s united it with Christ in His death, so as far as God is concerned it is actually dealt with; I am declared righteous. I still battle in this life with that old nature which I will do till the day I die, but instead Christ, risen again from the dead, now lives in me that victorious life. It is no longer I who live; it’s Christ who lives in me. And we live in that tension of mourning and the comfort of the Comforter. We mourn everyday and we enjoy the resources everyday, of the Comforter working in us and through us.
Does that make sense?
Let’s pray together. Father we thank You, thank You so much this morning that we are on level ground. We don’t come to You with some of us having a little bit more righteousness than somebody else, some with a better track record than somebody else, somebody who’s not got hooked into some bad things in the way somebody else has, and therefore they’re at an advantage. We come to You our Father, recognizing that all our righteousness is as filthy rags. But the marvellous thing is: and we’re so grateful for this our Father – that You sent Your Son, the Lord Jesus, that He might inhabit our bodies with His Spirit, that the life of Jesus might be lived in us as we live in that Spirit of repentance and trust. We turn from what we are, recognizing we can’t live this life ourselves and we turn to who You are, recognizing You can and You will, because that’s Your commitment to us, that we may be men and women who live everyday in union with Yourself and allow You to be our strength and our power. Make this real for us. For those of us who don’t know You at all, Lord, bring us to that starting gate of the Christian life when in repentance we confess our sin and our need and our separation from you and we thank You for dying as our substitute and being raised from the dead to indwell us, having cleansed us and forgiven us. Thank You so much for that. I pray many of us will enter that in a new way. We ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.